Vol. III · No. 138 · Weekend Recap | Saturday, July 11, 2026

Free Markets · Honest Money · No Apologies

The Week In Three Numbers No Pre-Market Framing — Markets Reopen Monday, 9:30 ET

Dear reader: the brass barometer at the Taintsville hardware store opened the week pointed about as fair as it ever points — the Dow closed Monday at a record 53,055.91, the S&P added 0.72% to 7,537.43, and the Radar’s momentum board read five sectors green out of eleven. By Wednesday the needle had swung hard the other way: an overnight escalation between the U.S. and Iran sent oil spiking more than 5% and futures down sharply before the open, and by Wednesday’s close the board had collapsed to just one green light. Thursday brought a genuine, broad-based bounce — Apple’s $30 billion deal with Broadcom lit a fuse under the whole chip trade — but the week ended exactly where Wednesday left it on momentum: one sector out of eleven actually confirmed, ten still digging out of the hole the week’s first half dug for them.

Here is the plain-spoken accounting, dear reader. The week’s single biggest story was Broadcom, Micron and AMD trading their way back to life on Wednesday and Thursday after Apple’s Broadcom deal broke — AMD alone ripped 5.67% on Thursday to $546.72, Micron added 4.52% to $991.64, and Broadcom itself tacked on 4.8% and then another 3.20% across the two sessions. Technology is the only one of eleven sectors whose momentum score actually turned positive by week’s end — the rest of the board rallied on price without confirming on the underlying math.

The second biggest story was the round trip in oil and the overdue wake-up in gold. WTI spiked to roughly $74 a barrel on Wednesday as the Iran-U.S. ceasefire collapsed and tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz ground toward a standstill; by Thursday, on reports the two sides might be cooling off, USO gave back 2.85% of that premium. Gold had spent the entire standoff sliding — from a Monday record near $382 on GLD down into the $374 range by midweek — before finally acting like a war hedge is supposed to act, rising 1.00% Thursday as silver jumped 2.48%. One session does not undo gold’s worst quarterly slide since 2013, but it was the first day all week the metals behaved the way a live shooting war is supposed to make them behave.

The third story, and maybe the most honest one, was where the money came out. Consumer Staples was the board’s worst mover on Thursday’s otherwise-green session — Costco fell 4.21%, PepsiCo 3.26%, Philip Morris 3.15% — with Utilities selling off alongside it. That is what a genuine risk-on rotation looks like: not just chips going up, but the boring, defensive trade coming apart on the very same day. A tape that only goes up in the stuff investors are supposed to be scared into is not the same tape as one where the scared money is actually leaving.

So here is Saturday’s honest accounting: the week opened at a record and five green sectors, an overnight geopolitical shock cut that to one by midweek, and a single blockbuster chip deal bought back two days of price without buying back the board. Tuesday brings the real test — JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Bank of America all report Q2 the same morning the June CPI print lands. The barometer in Taintsville doesn’t know yet whether Thursday marked the start of a real recovery or a two-day exhale before the next headline. It just knows the needle moved further than the charts have confirmed.

Monday, July 6 through Thursday, July 9 — the last closing tape available this run.

Unchanged from Issue 137 (Friday, July 10). No new closing session exists to recompute this table — it reflects Thursday, July 9’s close and will next update with Monday’s daily issue.

Five green sectors Monday, one green sector by week’s end, and a headline index that still finished the week roughly flat — that is a week where the scoreboard and the tape told two different stories, and the honest trader believes the board over the scoreboard every time. J.P. Morgan, asked once what the market would do, is said to have answered “it will fluctuate” — the only forecast in financial history that has never once been wrong, and as good a summary of this week as any chart could give you. Tuesday brings five bank earnings and the June CPI print on the same morning. That is when we find out whether Thursday’s bounce was the start of something or just the week’s second whiplash.

— Brad Hoppmann

Filed From Taintsville, Florida Have a good weekend. The board resets Monday, 9:30 ET.

If this week’s recap sharpened your Saturday, the highest compliment you can pay this letter is to forward it to the one person in your circle who would also have wanted to read it.

Disclaimer. The Sector Cycle Radar is a general-circulation editorial publication and does not provide personalized investment advice. Any signals, ratings, or commentary on specific sectors, stocks, or options reflect the output of the Radar’s proprietary models and are provided for informational and educational purposes only. The Radar does not know the financial circumstances of any individual subscriber. Subscribers should consult their own qualified financial advisor before making any investment decision. Past performance does not guarantee future results. This Weekend Recap reuses closing tape and sector-momentum reads already published in Issue 137 (Friday, July 10, 2026); no new market data was pulled for this issue. Synthetic, projected, or estimated data is labeled with the [SYN] highlight or with phrasing such as “est.” The author may hold positions in securities mentioned. The Sector Cycle Radar relies on the publisher’s exemption from the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 (Lowe v. SEC, 472 U.S. 181 (1985)) and operates as a regular publication with impersonal content.

Sector Cycle Radar · Issue 138 · Volume III · Weekend Recap · Filed from Taintsville, Florida · July 11, 2026